Looking for a group to sing with? Check out the Middlebury College Community Chorus. Made up of students, alumni, staff, faculty and community members from the surrounding area, this group gets together twice a week on Sundays and Tuesday evenings to sing classical works alongside newly composed choral music and arrangements of traditional and popular songs. Open to all who love to sing without audition.
The first rehearsals for the fall season begin Sunday, Sept. 16, 7 p.m., at Mead Chapel, and Tuesday, Sept.18, 7 p.m., Room 221, Mahaney Center for the Arts, at Middlebury College.
Jeff Rehbach conducts, Tim Guiles accompanies.  Email [email protected] for more information, or simply come to a rehearsal.
 
2018 fall concerts
Saturday, Nov. 17, 7 p.m.
Robison Concert Hall, Mahaney Center for the Arts
Free
Sunday, Nov. 18, 3 p.m.
Robison Concert Hall, Mahaney Center for the Arts
Free
 
Fall 2018 program
The choir steps onto the Concert Hall stage for its annual Thanksgiving concerts, this year with the theme “A Song Arising.” Historic, traditional and contemporary texts and music fill the hour-long program.
The program includes Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s earliest and final choral works, a setting of “Kyrie Eleison” for choir and string quartet, and the final movement of his splendid “Requiem.” The group will bridge these two selections with “Illumination,” a Latin text that originates from 17th century Ireland, set by composer Michael McGlynn, arranger for the Celtic ensemble Anúna.
Then they’ll depict the power of music in our lives with “Earth Song” by Frank Ticheli, “A Song Arising” by Frank M. Martin, a setting of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem “Always Something Sings” by Dan Forrest, and “Muusika” by Estonian composer Pärt Uusberg. This year the choir will present a dynamic new 2018 setting of Chilean songwriter and activist Violeta Parrad’s “Vida Atrevida,” scored by Middlebury’s Sam Guarnaccia.
The concert will continue exploring ideas for hope, peace and reconciliation with music by a new generation of composers, including “The Peace of Wild Things” by Jake Runestad and “I Dream A World” by Connor Koppin.
Songs of celebration and thanksgiving include “Hymn for America” by Stephen Paulus, “O Be Joyful by distinguished British composer John Rutter, and “How Can I Keep From Singing” by longtime Vermont resident Gwyneth Walker. The concert concludes with “I Will Sing,” a toe-tapping, hand-clapping gospel piece by African-American composer Rosephanye Powell.